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Strip Search Episode 2: Gary Should Never Encourage Me

The webcomic reality show, Strip Search, posted its second episode where its 12 contestants play “fax machine” a game where everyone writes a phrase in a notebook, passes it to the left, and then draws a picture based on the phrase and repeat. “Pictionary telephone” is what I think someone described it as.

After everyone plays the fax machine game, the episode shows up some of the results. Which is good television (I doubt every drawing was funny or clever) but not good for evaluating the unofficial POWER LIST of Strip Search.

Ericka Moen did nothing this week to disabuse my sense last week that she comes in as the favorite, given her proven record of talent on display in webcomics such as DAR and Bucko. I also think Moen’s sense of humor has enough of an overlap with the Penny Arcade vibe that they will appreciate her comics.

So who else distinguished themselves? Well Maki did with both his clever scenarios and some of his drawings that were shown. I also thought some of the women had some interesting, funny bits in their ideas and drawings, particularly Lexxy and Monica. Tavis from the drawings they showed from him has a pretty slick style that I think should work really well in this competition.

To be honest — the format of the show made it tough to form an opinion about everyone given how much their work was interconnected with the work of the rest of the group. No one seemed completely out of place in terms of their contributions in this episode. And the teaser about the first challenge in next week’s episode — designing a t-shirt, is something that not every webcomic artist is actually all that good at. As just one example, I love John Allison’s and Gordon McAlpin’s comics but I don’t recall either of them has ever designed a world-beating t-shirt. So while I could speculate about who’s at the bottom right now it’s probably pointless until we learn more about the contestants.